A variety of advancements in computer and data networking technologies have given rise to an entire industry of web-based retail stores and marketplaces. The nature and variety of these online stores and marketplaces is almost as diverse as the products and services that can be purchased. One of the many advantages that these online stores and marketplaces provide to consumers, when compared to their brick-and-mortar counterparts, is the ease with which the online stores and marketplaces enable a consumer to comparison shop. For instance, with traditional brick-and-mortar stores, a consumer must visit or call several different stores to obtain availability and pricing information for a particular product or service. Moreover, the consumer must visit the several stores in a relatively small time span, as the availability and price of a product or service may change very quickly. With online stores and marketplaces, a consumer can simply utilize a web browser, or similar application, to navigate to the relevant web pages of several different online stores to observe the availability and pricing information for a product or service of interest. Various online services have made it even simpler to comparison shop by consolidating product information, including prices, such that a consumer can simply perform a product search and instantly be presented with information concerning various online stores offering products that match the terms specified in the product search.
Online comparison shopping in this manner is advantageous in the sense that it makes it easy for a consumer to identify one or more online stores offering a particular product at a desirable price. However, shopping online in this manner still has some drawbacks. First, many online stores publish very low prices to attract traffic to their websites, but for a particular product, the store will have very limited product availability, if any, at the stated low price. Accordingly, conventional comparison shopping services direct user's to online stores with published low prices, hut no inventory available. Second, in many instances, a consumer may not be willing to enter into a transaction for a product or service being offered from an online store with which the consumer is not familiar. Finally, when a product is purchased from an online store, the product must be shipped to the consumer (typically by a third party) from a warehouse or other location. This delay that occurs from the time of purchasing the product until receiving the product not only quashes the level of satisfaction felt by the consumer in making the purchase, hut in some instances will defeat the very purpose for which the product is being purchased. For example, if the product is meant to be a last minute gift purchase, waiting even one or two days to receive the purchased product may not be a viable option.